Wrote My First Personal Letter in More than a Decade

Yesterday I wrote (typed, actually) my first personal letter in more than a decade.

 

(I don’t consider short notes letters.)

 

It seemed strange, and yet … strangely familiar!

 

I was all grown up before the Internet became available for public use (1991) and before personal computers  and desktop publishing became common (1980’s).

 

Before then, writing personal letters to individuals we knew or wanted to know was simply the way we communicated. And if we had momentous news or information to share with dozens of people, we might mimoegraph it, but usually letters were one offs to specific individuals.

 

Back in the day, I had literally scores of penpals, including Rodolfo S. Chua in the Philippines, Jessie Haire (now Richards), Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Karen (K-nut) Flannery, Linda Stanley (now Owen), Louise Stange, my cousins Tim Smith and Patty Foxen, and far too many others to list here or for you to even believe. (Writers, even neophyte unpublished ones, have to write the way we have to breathe–it simply has to get done, so we find ways to make it happen!)

 

I also wrote to the occasional TV or movie star or author–Jerry Lewis, Richard L Gehman (author of THAT KID: THE STORY OF JERRY LEWIS), Isaac Asimov–and received actual responses. To those who wrote back–like Asimov and Lewis–I wrote again. Never did write more than five, all told, to them, though. I answered their questions.

 

“What kind of name is Cle Elum?” authors Asimov and Gehman wanted to know. Most writers are curious like that and pursue things that intrigue them, expecting their pursuit to lead them somewhere, I suppose!

 

In sharp contrast, I never expected anything; I just hoped for more; and even when it arrived, I spent years thinking, “This can’t be. This is incredible! Who could believe this would ever happen to them, or to me?” (Serval. Beloved actor.  Working with wild animals.)

 

Maybe that’s the difference between the way girls and boys are raised. Men pursue. Women hope. Well, back then, they did. And back then I’d been pegged as a woman. (Wrong peg, but hey, do the dance. Any other way will be deemed madness.)

 

Everyone reading this, I presume, already knows about my pre-Internet correspondence with Carolyn and DeForest Kelley, which ended up bringing us together in an incredible way during the last ten years end of their lives–a crucial connection, unexpected by all, as it turned out.

 

So, as I was writing the personal letter yesterday, I was reconnecting with the technique, but missing its essence, I fear.

 

I was able to write about stuff that only the recipient would understand and find interesting, but not for very long.

 

I discovered that I actually know too little about her (other than her politics, which are a far cry from mine, to put it mildly, so I didn’t even go there!) beyond our common love of animals and the memories we have of shared good times together, so I ended up writing a soliloquy about how I thought the world could and would change for the better during my lifetime, and said it has and it hasn’t (but it hasn’t more than it has), and that these days I find myself feeling the way Mark Twain (a mutual love of ours) wrote about at the end of his life: “Some people call me  a pessimist in my old age, but I’m not. I am an optimist who did not arrive.”

 

Back in the day, I know my letters to individuals were about a shared love of some kind–usually Star Trek, writing, animals or Mark Twain–but did I really know them as individuals the way I know about the dear friend I wrote to yesterday?

 

I know this lady’s heart when it comes to friendship, for sure! She saved stuff and created a memory box for me about Deaken and DeForest when they passed away and, in both cases, within days they were in my hands to help me grieve and to remember. I still have them, and I cherish them as I cherish little else, because I cherish the heart that thought of creating them years before they would ever be needed. That’s thoughtfulness! That’s this woman in a nutshell.

 

She was Liberace’s fan club president; we visited his Hollywood Hills home together to look it over when it went on the market because we knew we’d never get anothert chance. It’s a memory I will treasure forever because she was both so happy to be there and so sad to be there too long after the fact.

 

She recalled the time she peered over into his yard to find him reclining in a lounger (I don’t know if it was at this property of his or another). He spotted her, grinned and waved, and she ducked so fast, embarrassed as hell at having been spotted.

 

Subsequently, she met him several times and he couldn’t have been lovelier to her. She adored him!!!

 

Which is why her politics throw me for an absolute loop. How can someone with a heart like that admire or listen to Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush and Donald Trump? They would have been Liberace’s biggest nightmares — and hers, too, it seems to me. The two book ends are mean-spirited bigots who rank women by apperance and “fuckability” and then call women who have sex whores, just for starters.

 

But I get it (a tiny bit) when it comes to Bush. He’s a Texan, and she loves all things Texan, and he is sort of lovable in a dorky kind of way, like the clumsy, grinning, almost apologetic-looking kid next door… I don’t forgive Bush his war crimes (mostly orchestrated by Cheney, to be fair), but next to Trump and Cheney, Bush looks like the Archangel Gabriel.

 

I’m getting off track here. Sorry!

 

It seemed I knew my penpals as well as or better than I know this lady (a former co-worker at the Animal Protection Institute) which is pretty much impossible because I had never met any of them except my cousins and my childhood friend Jessie (of course), but because I’d seen their handwriting, heard additional thoughts, and learned some personal details along the way, I felt I knew them as well.

 

Which brings us to today. I remember one time Carolyn Kelley telling me that someone had once told her, “Don’t cry over someone who wouldn’t cry over you.”

 

I remember thinking when she said it, “I have no idea who would cry over me…” I had so protected myself from potential heartache that I assumed everyone else pretty much had, too, and could keep a stiff upper lip during almost any tragedy.

 

These days, I know some who would cry over me.  I’d cry over them, too. And I’m grateful for them beyond words! They include the penpals I listed above, even though most of us have long since lost touch with each other as penpals.

 

Today’s ease of communication, and its availability, forces us to “cut to the chase” because we know everyone is busy (when we’re not hunkered down with this COVID-19 pandemic, that is) and we don’t want to waste anybody’s precious time. Especially the older we get, we realize how precious our waking hours are.

 

I think today’s easy access to communication tools allows more people to know about us, but fewer people to actually know us. And I think, to a large extent, that’s what’s missing from most interactions between people. They’re so public (potentially) that keeping our cards hidden seems the smartest way to operate.

 

And few people ever slow down enough to actually look at and talk to each other–but now that we have the time (while in lockdown), it’s the perfect opportunity to write an old-fashioned letter.

 

Pretend the Internet, Facetime and Facebook don’t exist and connect the old-fashioned way with the people you care about.

 

Yeah, it’s time-consuming. Yeah, it’s unsung and unheralded…but how much do you want to bet your letter will be saved and cherished and held tightly to forever because of how rare is it to get an actual letter in the mail these days?  I get maybe three a year, and I hold onto them for months. Some of them I save.

 

(Emails? Meh. I save such a small fraction of them, and I may never even look at them again. That’s where written letters are so much better! Emails are considered common and can be too easily discounted or discarded.)

 

By gaining virtual connections, we’ve lost the kind of intimacy we used to save in memory boxes and treasure chests.

 

I still have a birthday card my dad sent me.

 

I still have the front part of a box of tableware Dad bought me because he wrote on it, “For your new home with love. Mom and Dad. May life be kind to you. Love XXX Dad  Love,  Mom XXX (This was after my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer. She wrote all the letters and signed all the cards until she wasn’t able to anymore.)

 

I think he would smile to know I still have them.

Why do so few words make me so happy and soggy?

 

Because my dad, brilliant as he was (he was a general contractor and built structures all over the United States, including part of the State Library in Olympia) was close to illiterate (he had to quit school early to help his family survive during the Great Depression) and these are the only two things he ever wrote to me, and I know he sweated bullets doing it. I know it was that important to him to say these things to me, things he never would have said out loud.

 

There are people in your life who would treasure a  letter from you. You might know who they are; you might not. But everyone could use a surprise pick-me-up right now. A personal letter might be just what the doctor ordered!

 

Give it a try and let me know what kind of response you get!

 

 

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